Monday should be the beginning of the week - not Sunday
Arguing against a long-standing but irrational custom in Canada, the USA, and several other countries
Which day marks the beginning of a week? I think that it is Monday, and the international standard ISO 8601 agrees with me. However, according to the website TimeAndDate.com, this is NOT universally accepted. Several countries, including Canada and the USA, consider Sunday as the start of the week.
Hold on! Do those countries REALLY count Sunday as the first day of the week? I am an Anglophone Canadian, and I do NOT observe this "standard" being used in everyday communication. Here are two counter-examples that highlight this discrepancy.
1) Which days of the week are considered to be the weekend? In the USA and Canada, the weekend is Saturday and Sunday. The name "weekend" is literally a combination of the words "week" and "end". How could Sunday be part of the end of the week and the start of the week? This is a blatant contradiction.
2) Suppose that your client asks
Can we meet at the beginning of next week to discuss our next contract?
Would you propose meeting at 11 AM on Sunday in response? Of course not. No sane or rational person would ever propose a meeting on a Sunday as the beginning of the week.
Definitions should reflect how people use words in practice, and Anglophones in Canada and the USA always treat Monday as the beginning of the week. We should stop saying otherwise, and we should display weekly calendars with Monday on the very left and Sunday on the very right - as shown in the picture below.
